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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

I enjoyed this book, at over 600 pages I finished it in well under a week, and even then the end seemed to come on suddenly. Again, Huxley amuses the reader whilst delivering his thoughts and reflections, this time mainly centred around pacifism. This didn't add anything to the book for me, but I found the storyline good enough, and the way that the chapters are achronological seemed to give some unexpected variety of excitement to the whole affair. This is a must read for Huxley fans, I think, and better than the last one of his that I read, Antic Hay, which was thoroughly good too. Like that book, this one is hilarious in places, I'm never quite sure if he means to be so funny, but I think it's the frank and perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated things his characters do and say, so convincingly believable at the same time, that does it for me.

sfisk on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

Huxley at his best! This is probably my favorite from him, a lengthy read, and it will have you looking up words and translating, but worth the time.

TakeItOrLeaveIt on LibraryThing

More than 1 year ago

¿There¿s a fog upon LA. And my friends have lost their way¿¿ was the passage to cross my mind upon waking up and viewing the inexhaustible fog outside my father¿s mountainside window. Then the rain began. It was an apt day to finish the most self-reflective novel of my favorite author¿s, Eyeless in Gaza. A discursive tale on the perils of contemplation, the terrors of trivialities, and of course, the great indignation love can cause an individual. Nothing like finishing a book accentuating the trivialities of trivialities all the while knowing what is truly important. Huxley's struggle between finding spirituality, having a command on science and overcoming ill-advised love is a rainy Sunday kind of book. It took me almost two months to finish the novel mostly because I wasn't rushing. I read many treatises, essays, and plays in between and saved eyeless for bathroom reading. Huxley would have been fine with that. I know of numerous instances in which peoples lives have been altered while reading Eyeless. Not so much because of the book itself but corresponding instances with reading it. For example, a terribly underrated British band named after the book for its lead singer, Martyn Bates, happened to be reading the novel when he met band cohort Peter Becker. I was of course hoping for the same. I didn't find him but I did discover Alexander Scriabin, The Russian symbolist composer that suits my fancy, I also developed a true friendship, and finally made a decision I've been attempting to make for practically seven years: to pursue an autodidactic lifestyle and terminate my life-long bind to the education institute.Is pitting the soothsaying Dr. Miller against the English cynic in a Socratic battle on humanity/pacifism a scurrilous afterthought? Well, Huxley did wait until the end of the novel to reveal the mystic Miller so his doubters wouldn¿t get to that point, but he makes clear how he finally ceased his years of doubting and what would make a logical British man turn over to an American optimist. A human for a human instead of human vs a bug. The optimist will be granted approval and find humanity hearty and the cynic will continue to hate. The ultimate relationship so well exposed in the most Huxlian way at the end of this great read.